Thursday, February 27, 2014

Capitol Arts Network, the Washington area’s
fastest-growing organization for professional and emerging artists, will
explore the impact of “significant encounters” on artists and their work during
March, with an exhibition produced by studio art faculty members at Montgomery College.

“For this exhibit, we have defined a ‘critical contact’ as an encounter that
has had a significant impact on an artist,” said Claudia Rousseau, Montgomery College. “Such
encounters might be with a place, a book, a person, a particularly galvanizing
moment. The exhibit could also be a consideration of critical encounters
between or among species, cultures, technologies, economies, natural elements
and many other things.”

The March show opens on March 3rdwith a First Friday opening reception
on Friday, March. 7, from 6 to 9 p.m. at Capitol Arts Network’s Urban By Nature
Gallery at 12276 Wilkins Avenue in Rockville. The exhibit runs through the end of
the month.

“The variety of approaches among the 22 participants in this exhibit is
extensive,” Rousseau said. “Among
the most prominent subthemes are memories of certain places and the ways in
which contacts with those places have had a lasting impact. This can be seen,
for example, in the ceramics of Vidya Vijayasekharan, who also relates the
theme to the globalization of things once limited to a small part of the world.”

“From a very different part of the world, Megan Van Wagoner’s
Standing Production recalls her childhood in the American Midwest. Judy Stone’s installation titled
Transmission also carries memory of a pivotal trip to Mexico,” she said. “Another subtheme concerns specific
contacts with a person or persons. Perhaps
most striking in this group are the works of Kate Kretz for whom the birth of
her daughter had a significant impact.”

“The often silent interaction between men in India is the point
of contact for Daniel Venne. The
theme of exploration, whether physical or emotional is also the key for a group
of artists including painter Wil Brunner,” she continued.

“Critical contacts between elements of nature are also a common
theme, as in the photographs of Mary Staley and Grace Graham. Yet, perhaps the
most compelling results of setting out this theme are the numerous
interpretations of it in terms of the contact of the self with inner self or
introspective examinations, as evidenced in the work of exhibit participants
David Carter and Michaele Harrington.”

The Capitol Arts Network’s
Rockville headquarters features studio space for more than 70 working artists
artists plus classrooms, work and meeting areas and gallery and exhibition
space where artists can work individually or side-by-side in a collaborative
community setting. The center is conveniently located near Rockville’s Twinbook
Metro station, in Montgomery County’s developing “Twinbrook Arts Zone,” which
also includes the home of the Washington School of Photography.